Rod Holders

So after a year of declining business, moving to a new place, and the total upheaval of my personal life, I'm back to working on the boat and I must say that I'm once again pretty pumped about the project. I've moved the boat to the garage at the house I'm currently living in and it's turning out to be the perfect build space. Having the boat right there at home is much more convenient than in a warehouse 20 minutes away. There's just nothing like being able to work in 30 minute blocks of time as they present themselves. Anyway, on to the boat.

I've reached the stage in the build where every step requires a great deal of forethought. For the most part, I'm no longer following the plans and am customizing the layout based on my own personal preference. This presents the opportunity for colossal screw-ups heretofore never encountered! So I'm just trying to take things slowly and methodically, but without letting the whole "paralysis through analysis" thing grind the build to a halt. I've already glassed in the undersole midframes, so the next step is to figure out what I'm going to do with the walkaround gunwale supports/rodholders. After a lot of cardboard templating, this is where I'm currently at.

Since the rodholders are integral to the framework of the boat, their location fore and aft can't be changed. This sucks, as where they have to be is not exactly ideal for holding ... uh ... rods. To actually have the rods supported correctly, the tips have to penetrate the bulkhead at the front or back of the cockpit. As shown in the pics, I'll probably go with the rear bulkhead, Flip Pallot style. The idea behind this is that it provides easiest access to the person on the casting deck. If the caster is throwing a 7 weight for reds and a pack of rampaging jacks rolls through, the 10 weight should be within easy reach. In theory. The pics show an 8' spinning rod, 9' 12 weight, and 7' light spinner in the holders. Looks like for maximum fly rod rockage, all the tubes will have to extend almost to the transom. I might also have to raise the lower rod slot to make it useful for anything but something like a gaff. I'm close to what I want though. The finished product will be a sandwich of 2 pieces of 1/4" ply and a piece of 1x mahogany, which should give me a frame about 1 1/4" thick. I shudder at the idea of a $500 fly rod bouncing around on the single piece of 3/8" shown in the plans. For weight reasons, Divinycell would have been a preferable core to the mahogany, but that stuff is outrageously expensive when compared to the low, low price of free I'm getting the mahogany for. Bungees will secure the rods in the holders while running.

OK, so I'm just going to come right out and say that from here on out, a lot of the customizing you see me do you'll already find on Bayport Bob's boat. Part of that is because I feel like we've had a similar vision for our boats from the beginning. Part of it is that some of his design solutions are more workable than the ones I've come up with, the most notable being gas storage. Also, his FS18 appears to be totally badass, so there's that.

The Cap'n has a new perch. He doesn't have anything to add to the rodholder discussion except that he is watching you and is terribly displeased.



Woot.

Transom Knees Finished and Frames Started

Not sure if people would prefer many short updates or intermittent large ones that show a lot of progress, but the guys on www.microskiff.com keep telling me to finish the boat instead of spending time over there. Gotta show them something. Last time out I ran fillets on the transom knees and glassed parts of them. The tape shown here had peel ply applied to it in hopes that it would eliminate some of the resin running out of the laminate that I've been experiencing. It worked to a degree, but at least it's a relatively clean layup.

What I hadn't counted on was the fillet not filling the gap between knee and stringer. I had to leave these to cure and then come back today and radius the sharp edge on the back side of the stringer. This allowed the glass to make the turn. Well, it allowed the glass to make the turn in a half-assed, not quite cooperating sort of way.

I've also been experimenting with wetting out the glass off of the boat and then applying it after it's been wet out. Professional builders have a high dollar machine called an impregnator that does this. I don't. It will take a little more refinement, but I think that I have worked out a way to wet out the tape in a disposable tupperware container and then remove the excess resin before moving the glass to the boat. It's much faster than trying to wet out the tape on the part with a chip brush, and I feel like I'm getting better glass/resin ratios. I'll post pics when I get a better handle on how to do it. Anyway, here's the finished product. Not the prettiest layup (should have radiused the stringer edge even more), but at least there's not resin pooling everywhere. The stringer/knee joint was just too difficult to wet out to risk messing it up with the peel ply on this one.

I also started the frames. Sort of. These are the undersole midframes that will replace the temporary frames used in the construction of the hull. I cut them to width, clamped them in the boat, marked the bottom profile, and then cut the profile with my trusty Bosch jigsaw. I swear that's the best power tool I have. They're now tacked in with some putty. Next time out, I'll fillet and tape them in.

That's it for now. I'm terrified that I'm going to glass in all my frames and then realize after the fact that the boat has some twist in it. The floor of the warehouse looks like a panorama of the Andes, so the sawhorses all have shims under them. I spent a good bit of time with a laser level trying to get everything straight, and I think it looks OK. Keep your fingers crossed.

Stringers

Time and money have been short of late, but I've been slowly picking away at the boat. The stringers are in, and last night I glued in the transom knees. I also have the chase for my gas line set up how I want it. It's not tacked in the boat, but it is glued together for the most part. I think that I'm going to run a chase under the gunnels for the electric. It's the only way to keep it totally separated from the gas line under the sole since there's just not a lot of room under there. The stringers have been the first part of the boat that have required the standard fillet and tape technique, which I missed out on getting pictures of. I'll try to do better on the frames. If not, Bayport Bob has some great pics of the technique on his site. Here are a few of where I stand right now. Please disregard the heinous epoxy work. The stuff gets pretty viscous when it's cold. I used too much to wet out the glass on the first stringer, and it ended up running out of the laminate in the middle of the night. At least it will be buried under a layer of foam and a sole.



I'm going to do my best to make sure the boat is really set up level, and then start getting some frames in it. If DHL can stop running around in circles and bring me my supplies, I'll be set. Friday night it was in Ft. Walton Beach, FL, 40 minutes from house. Last night, it was in Ohio. Nice job DHL.

New Build Space

Well, after a few months of inactivity, I've finally started setting up a new build space. To the determined few who still check the site, I admire your dedication. I think that I got 8 hits today, but you eight people rule. Especially you, guy from Croatia. Yeah, you know who you are. You're awesome.

About the space. Up until now, I had the boat in a spot next to my mom's house that was just too exposed to the weather for my tastes. Not that I've had time to work on it while we're adjusting to our new life/jobs/house/etc, but it got wet in the rain and was exposed to dirt and UV (UV breaks down unprotected epoxy for those not in the know). Fortunately, a spot at my dad's warehouses opened up and he let me have it for free. And by a spot, I mean a Cavern of Rock that laughs in my old garage's face and then steals its girlfriend.


I could build a 40' sportfisher in there. No more sucking in my gut and inching around the boat trying not to get epoxy all over the front of my shirt. Maybe I'll build a pocket bike track around the boat to keep occupied while epoxy sets.........


Yeah. Feel it.

Don't think that the Cap'n isn't still around either. He's been hanging out on my porch staring me in the face every time I leave to go to work in the morning. Displeased to say the least. Now he has a new perch to hurl insults down from.

"Arrrgh. Your boat be crap me boy."

He's happiest when he can be surly. Hopefully, all this means that I will start making some progress. Money is really tight, but I enough material left over to get me started at least. I've also been able to poach some materials off a jobsite or two. Updates as soon I get something done.

Speed Testing

I got the FS18 up to 70 mph today......


.....and my bike........



.......at the same time!!!




I have successfully moved the boat to my mom's house in the Panhandle. No problems during transport, but a nerve wracking experience nonetheless. I had visions of all my hard work tumbling down the highway the whole time. It shifted a little during the move but not enough to be a problem. Everyone who has seen it so far has said that it's considerably larger than the impression that they got from this site. That's a good thing I guess. I was really lucky in that I didn't run into any rain on the whole 5 hour drive. If you've ever been to the area, you'll know that to drive anywhere along the Gulf Coast of Florida on a summer afternoon and not encounter torrential downpours rolling in from the water is a statistical anomaly. I was a little concerned with how well I had epoxy sealed all the wood, so I was glad it ended up being a non-issue.

The next few weeks will be devoted to packing, moving, unpacking, and settling in to the new house and new job. After all that is finished, I can start working on the boat again. So expect updates in a few weeks once everything has calmed down.

Elie

Inside Glass

I've been working like a demon on the boat recently in order to get it ready to move tomorrow. I put in 10 hours on it today and with the help of a modified build crew, got the inside glass finished. After prepping the boat in the morning, Frank and Matt came over to help. Things went much more quickly and smoothly than the outside job did, but I guess that's what experience gets you. The procedure was essentially the same as last time, taping the seams, then laying the glass cloth on top of everything. The only differences were that we skipped the peel ply this time and that the seams first required a putty fillet with a 1/2" radius so the glass would take the turn. Almost all the glass here will be either covered by the sole, or hidden under the decks so the peel ply would have been more work than it was worth.

Precoated panels, fillets in place, overlapped tape on keel:


Chines taped:


12 oz. biaxial cloth laid out, cutting down centerline for the bow fold:



Frank of "Frank's Canoe" fame, me, and Matt, professional termite sorter:



Putting together the bow overlap.



No real pictures of the glassing process. We used the squeegees primarily, and it worked out great. Prior to starting today, I cinched the the ratchet straps down on the frames and measured the width at each one. This way when we were done glassing I would know how much to pull the sides in even though the frames had been removed. Hopefully, this will help me get the shape I want when it's time to put the frames back in.





I differed from the plans a little and ran the cloth all the way up the transom. I probably could have glued together my transom sandwich a little better when I started, so I figured this couldn't hurt.



I'm pumped about how the inside laminate has turned out. It looks great. I can't thank Frank and Matt enough. I couldn't have finished this on my own today and I HAVE to get this thing out of here tomorrow. My jackbag of a landlord is going back on his word and kicking us out a week early. Gotta get moving. Thanks guys.

Elie

The Flip!!!!

Today was a big day in the build process of any boat, the flip. I finished up the 3rd layer of the rubrail last night in preparation for today. It all went well, just took longer than I expected, about 4-5 hours for each layer. It stiffened the boat up a good bit, but the tension from it pulled the sides of the boat away from the frames as well. More on that later.

The only place where the boat was attached to the frames was the transom, so those screws came out and we were ready to pop it off the strongback. After remembering to disconnect the transom knees halfway through the move, Frank and I wrestled it out into the front yard. For what it is, an 18 ft boat, it is amazingly light (maybe 100 lbs.) But with just the two of us trying to lift it over our heads to get it off the frames, it was a bear. I think I pulled something in my neck. It's still howling tonight after 2 BC's and 2 Sierra Nevada's.

Anyway, here she is in all her glory:




The truck and flatbed in the background are borrowed from my dad and will transport this Bad Larry to its new home in the Panhandle. It was still tough to get a great shot, but you can at least get a better idea of the lines. She just looks fast, being shaped a lot like what I think a boat tail rifle bullet looks like. The main task for the day was to make a cradle to affix to the strongback to hold the flipped boat. This is the kind of thing that Frank is good at and he took the lead on the design. In short order, we had 4 cradles to match the hull.


Some scrap carpet and trimming of the ends of the cradles and they were ready to screw to the strongback. In the flipped boat, you may be able to see where I marked the locations of all the interior pieces while it was still on the frames.


While most people will keep the whole stringer/frames assembly intact, flip it and put it back in the boat, I don't have room to do that. I broke down all the frames and stringers and stacked them to the side, so I need to know the exact locations of everything I took out, so I can later put them back in.

The cradles we made held the boat well, but the strongback was now way to high to get into the interior to do the next glassing step. The boat came back off and some very bootleg engineering brought the whole assembly to a more reasonable height.


Yes, my shop is an embarrassing mess. This is standard and I think goes well with the hurricane damage hole in the ceiling. Have to get it cleaned before the next big glassing party. Like I mentioned before, one problem that I noticed when we test fitted the frames was that with the force of the rubrail bowing it out the whole thing has sort of opened like a book in the middle, pulling the sides away from the frames. This has been exacerbated by the flip because the weight of the sides pulling down now make it worse. With some ratchet straps cinching it together at the frames, it has all came together beautifully though. Dealing with the straps will be impossible when we glass, so we'll make some presized braces based on the current beam that will pull the sides in right after we do the inside (thanks for the tip Bob). With the glass still wet, we hope this will help in retaining the proper shape.

I have to say that I'm proud of myself today. After months of sanding, today it hit me, I'm actually building a freaking boat. For the first time, I feel like fishing out of this thing is in the forseeable future. Sweet. I think I'll go have another beer. Cheers everyone.

Elie

Rubrail - Part 1

Like I mentioned before, it's time to get the Spook ready to make the haul up to the Panhandle. So I called Frank over to help me rip half a sheet of 1/4" ply into 1 1/2" strips. My new Freud blade worked like a charm. Unfortunately, on the last strip, the bearing in the saw decided to try to catch on fire. Epoxy dust from all the sanding I've been doing probably got in there, and that's a death sentence.

Since I don't have any room to work, I had to turn the boat into my lamination table by covering it in plastic. I then laid out the first round of strips that I had prefitted to the boat earlier. Following the lead of some other builders, when the strips were prefitted on the boat, I drilled a few 1/4" holes through each one. These would later be fitted with dowels in order to align the strips when they were slippery with glue. Next, I precoated the inside face of the strips, the edge of the hull, and the dowels with straight epoxy. Here's the setup.

I've been scrounging clamps for about a year so I was ready for this moment, and I used every damn one of them. I could have used about 10 more. Once the precoat was tacky, I mixed up a batch of Gel Magic. I measured it by weight this time and things went much more smoothly. I slathered it on each strip and then used a notched spreader to even things out. Being the middle of July in Florida, temperatures inside the garage border on preposterous. I mixed up enough Gel Magic to do one strip on each side. If you get it on the strips quick, and don't let it spend much time in the pot, you can do two strips at a time. Barely.

Applying the strips is tricky. The dowels are tough to pound into a slippery strip of ply. And then pound into the side of the hull, all while trying not to get the glue on the faired surfaces. Once the dowels are in, you're golden though. I couldn't take pictures of the process, but suffice it to say, it's messy and nerve wracking. Here are some pics of the finished result.


One of the bow strips requires both a miter and a bevel for them to butt up properly. You can see it in this closeup, as well as a couple of the dowels. Dowels and bow will be trimmed up tomorrow and then the whole process will be repeated again. And then again, for three layers total.

I went around after everything was glued up and cleaned up all the glue squeeze out, creating a nice bead of glue where the strips meet the hull. This would be a nightmare to do when it is hardened up.

Still Fairing

I’ve had a lot of comments recently, all basically amounting to, “I’m tired of looking at that damn fly. Put up a report.” So, I’ll give you guys what I’ve got ……. and what I’ve got is fairing. The bow seam and transom edges need some work, but otherwise the whole boat now has a rough fair on it. By this I mean that all surfaces have had at least 2 coats of Quickfair pulled on and then sanded off with the random orbit. This has eliminated pretty much all fiberglass edges and smoothed out the majority of the big imperfections. It's tough to tell because of the patchy color, but it's all pretty smooth.

It's tough to get a good pic of the boat in it's entirety in the small work space. I'll make sure to take lots of pictures when we flip it. What remains is work on the bow and transom, filling a slight dip where the hull panels were spliced together, longboarding the crap out of the whole thing, and then putting a slight radius on all the hard edges. But all that has to wait. I'm about to get the hell out of the bum-ridden crimefest Gainesville is becoming. This means I have one month to get the boat ready for transport, so I am abandoning the fairing at its current state and going to concentrate on making the thing structurally sound. First step in this is the rubrail. Unlike in many production boats, the rubrail on the FS18 (and a lot of other Bateau designs) is integral to the strength of the hull. It is composed of three layers of the same 1/4” ply that the rest of the hull is made from. After I sand the fairing compound off the edge of the sides, these are glued on in a sandwich about an inch and a half wide. Here’s a 1 ½” strip that I marked as a guide and then sanded off.

Once the rubrail is complete, we will pop the empty hull off of the strongback (looking forward to this step), leaving behind all of the framing still aligned and attached to the base. The inside seams will be filleted and taped, and then the inside will be sheathed in a layer of glass like the outside was. Once it’s all cured the stringers will be filleted and taped into the hull and then it should be plenty strong enough to load onto my dad’s flatbed trailer and move to it’s new home in the Panhandle. Here I can take my time and finish the inside right instead of trying to rush through the whole thing. Bonus. For a better explanation of all of this stuff, check out Bayport Bob’s website in the sidebar. He’s already done it and has pictures of the whole process.

I wish I were progressing faster, but fairing is a slow process and things have been totally hectic recently. It’s definitely one of those things that you just have to do an hour or two at a time and trust that you’re making progress because nothing obvious is getting done. I have had a lot of things take precedence over the boat in the past few months. I'm trying to get all my loose ends tied up here. Cole moved to P-cola, so he and I took one last fishing trip before he left, down to Sanibel in search of our first snook, especially on the fly. We had limited success but a good time. Some faces were rocked. We reached the conclusion that snook are awesome and we would like to catch more of them. Check out Cole’s report on his website in the side bar. Between that, trying to pack the house up, finding a place to live in the Panhandle, and ramped up intensity in the lab, making progress on the boat has been and will continue to be a challenge. Posts may be infrequent until I get settled in August, but I’ll do my best.

A Fly in the Ointment

I'm making some headway on the fairing. I feel like the hook is close to being done (plus I'm tired of looking at it), so I started pulling fairing compound foward today. I also pulled the first coat on the transom. I feel like the rest of the hull will go more quickly than the hook because I'll just be smoothing out the lines left by glass overlap, filling small imperfections, etc. I'll have the hull to use as a guide. With the hook, I've basically been sculpting a new bottom out of thin air, which is taking a lot of time. Today, the DHL man brought me a big vat of Quickfair and a resupply of spreaders, stirrers and cups, which should get me through the bottom of the hull at least, so I'm good to go. I need to find a flexible straight edge to pull the Quickfair up near the bow. The radii on the curves are much tighter up there and the piece of aluminum saw guide I've been using won't work on anything with much compound curvature. I'm told there is a large sheetrock knife at Lowe's that might do the job.

Frank finally finished his cedar strip canoe and it's pretty sweet. For pictures, check out his website through the link in the sidebar.

I went out to trim up some half-cured Quickfair tonight and found this robber fly stuck to the hull, a victim of the fast curing fairing compound. These guys ambush other insects in midair, especially honeybees, drag them to the ground, and suck the life out of them. Karma's a bitch sometimes, I guess.

You guys thought I gave up didn't you? I haven't been posting because with this fairing process, there's been a lot of work, but there hasn't been a whole lot of visible progress. The whole boat has been sanded with the RO, filled with a thin fairing slurry and then sanded with the RO again. I mentioned before that I had about a 1/4" hook in the bottom of the hull a couple feet foward of the transom. This was much more minor when I was stitching up the hull, but the buildup of fiberglass where the transom meets the hull made it deeper. It took a lot of time, but I used Bayport Bob's method and filled and leveled at the keel seam and chines. This was done with a longboard. I then dumped a bunch of fairing compound in the gap, and used a straightedge to drag it down the boat. You can see the filled back end here.


The right side has about an hour with a longboard put into it. The left side is untouched. You can see the low spots where the board didn't hit. The edges are purple because they were done with the epoxy/microballoon mix. The filler is QuickFair. This stuff is awesome to apply. It comes in two buckets, one part has the consistency of cake icing and the other of warm Crisco. I weigh them out on the same sheet of plastic, mix with a spreader and then apply to the hull. The mixed product has the consistency of mayonnaise and pulls across the hull really smoothly. It works great. I won't say how much is in the hook. An embarrassing amount.

I also have been squaring up the chines on the back 2/3 of the boat. They had to be rounded over for the glass to take the bend but the boat should corner better with a harder chine.

The final product won't be this sharp. Once they're fair, I'll put a small radius on them. They still have a ways to go.

The bow curve wasn't very fair and I wanted a slightly less canoe look up there. Again, it needs more work, but it's getting there.


Too put it bluntly, fairing is miserable. It has to been done manually, which is agonizingly slow, and I'm not real clear that I'm even doing it the right way. I have a long, long, long way to go on this. Keep plugging I guess. All the previous steps were short enough that the next new thing was just around the corner. Not here. It's tedious. This is where a lot of people give up on the project. I can't though. When I sit on the couch, the thing mocks me from the garage. "I can hear you in there, Elie. Come finish me. You'll never catch another redfish on that flyrod if you don't finish me. You know who doesn't finish boats, don't you? Hippies, that's who. You're not a hippy, are you? ARE YOU?"

Damn boat. On a positive note, Clutch has created what might be the ultimate boat building music in their new album, "From Beale Street to Oblivion". Songs about giving O'l Scratch the boot. Check. Songs making fun of vegan bike punks. Check. A song called Mr. Shiny Cadillackness. Check. Bluesy yet totally ass-rocking. Chiggity-check. Cole burned it for me and it's my current fairing music.

Also, there is a new website dedicated to the class of boat I'm building. It's called www.microskiff.com . They had a get together last weekend that I went to and got a lot of advice on setup from people who fish these boats every weekend. It was a great experience. Many thanks to all the people I talked to. I also got to spend most of the day on the bow of a Hell's Bay Whipray (Thanks Jason). What a sweet skiff. Anyone out there who wants to trade a Whipray for a partially faired FS18 hull, please contact me. I think we may be able to work something out. Didn't have a whole lot of luck with reds though. Spooked several hundred, but only managed two this size.

I've never seen fish that skittish. More to come as soon as something noteworthy happens. Click on the map in the sidebar to see where people who check out the page live. Don't ever say people in Russia and Australia don't like the FS18. I have the proof.

Quick Fairing Update

A quick update on the fairing process. In the first couple feet foward of the transom, I've got a pretty good amount of hook, which is basically a depression in the hull. This can negatively affect the way the boat performs on plane, so it needs to be filled, making the back 6-8 ft of the boat a straight run. Bayport Bob had a similar problem and spent a lot of time trying to figure out the best way to correct it. He's had the best success by trueing up the keel and each chine. These can then be used as guides in the same way that wooden forms are used when pouring a concrete sidewalk. The area between the chine and keel lines are filled with fairing compound and and it is pulled down the hull with a straight edge laid across the panel in the same way that the sidewalk is leveled off to the wooden forms. After screwing around with the fairing compound a bit, I think this really is the best way to go. By tonight I should have the keel and chine lines pretty close. I made a longboard by gluing the biggest belt sander belt I could find onto a piece of hardboard and gluing a couple handles onto the other side. I used it on the keel last night and I think that it will help enormously in getting things straight and fair. I may make one out of scrap 1/4" ply too as I think that a stiffer version might be even more useful for the back half of the boat where everything is pretty flat. As I had hoped, the fairing compound has turned out to be much easier to sand than anything so far. I'm sure I will get tired of hand sanding, but right now it's a welcome change from the noise and fiberglass hell that is the random orbit. Will post again when I have something good. Right now, it's just puddles of purple stuff on the hull.

The Fairing Begins

Well, the bottom glassing turned out pretty well overall. It seems we should have used a little more epoxy than we did with the peel ply, because when I pulled it off, the surface wasn't totally uniform.


In places the weave didn't fill in completely, but the peel ply did smooth things out nicely and sucked excess epoxy out of areas where we'd put too much. Places where the weave didn't fill in all the way looked like this.

First thing to do was a quick pass with the sander to open up all the little pockets a little bit. This is my current setup.

The shop vac really eliminates most of the dust, makes your sandpaper last longer, and in this case, kept all the little holes from getting filled with sanding dust. A little information for the uninitiated: surpassing the previous champions, diamonds and a mid-90's Phil Anselmo, epoxy without any fillers is officially the hardest thing in the world. It laughs in 60-grit's face. But a little bit of time last night and I had the weave opened up a little.

The peel ply really did suck things down pretty well because if I sand just a little below the surface, I start hitting glass. Next, I mixed up a very thin fairing compound. A mixture of phenolic microballoons and silica is added to the normal laminating resin to thicken it to the consistency of runny ketchup. I smeared this all over the hulh with a spreader, making sure to make some of the passes in the direction of the weave. The purple color is from the microballoons.

The mix was made so thin so it would settle down into the weave and it worked great. It's tough to capture in a picture, but the weave filled most of the way in, with very few of the pinholes that indicate a bubble was trapped inside.

I have a ton of sanding to do on the sides of the boat and around the transom. The peel ply made a mess in these areas. I already hit them with a paint scraper, so that should cut down on time a little. I'll fill the weave on the sides and then probably switch from the microballoon mix to Quickfair. This is a Silvertip product that is basically like epoxy-based marine bondo. It's very thick, cures in three hours, and sands like butter. It's also pretty expensive. I'm in the fairly common position of being both poor and fundamentally lazy. But to me, it's entirely worth it to spend an extra $50-100 on the hull if it will save me hours of sanding time. I haven't even started the real fairing yet and I already detest sanding. I have to admit that the idea of the amount of work I'm going to have to do to get this ready for primer is a little overwhelming. I let it rest for a few days to try and relax but everytime I do that all I think about is how I'm going to do the next step. The thing won't leave me alone. I'll just try and follow my plan of getting at least one thing done each day and I'm sure it will all come together.

Bottom Glass

The bottom glass is done!! This is a major hurdle in the build, and one that a lot of people worry about, but having helped with the glasswork on Frank's canoe, it seems it just takes time and attention to detail. The night before Cole and I laid out all the pieces of glass that we would use and trimmed them to size. Then we rolled them onto pieces of PVC for storage. For those of you doing this, first press the tape you use to secure the rolls onto the hull or something to cut down on its tackiness. Too sticky and you'll destroy the glass when you pull it off. This morning I put a layer of epoxy onto the hull. Cap'n Gnarly surveyed from the Crow's Nest.

I've mentioned before that this coat saturates the wood and prevents it from sucking later epoxy coats out of the glass. You have to make sure that the precoat starts to set up for this to work though and with the cold front, it took a couple hours to get tacky. I then called up the build crew so we could get going. Frank and Cole showed up with a quickness in their matching Jeep Cherokees. The Flatsstalker Army had arrived. It's hard to overstate how much help these guys were today. Pure gold.

Right off the bat, the epoxy started flying. Frank has to developed a pretty burly allergy to the West epoxy he used on his canoe and didn't want to risk reacting to the Silvertip, so he was the designated mixer for the day.


For those paying attention: yes, that is a pubic louse on his shirt and yes, the tag line does say, "Crabs, the butterflies of love". The French term for crabs is papillon de amor (or something close to that), and that's what it means. We just call them crotch crickets. Entomologist humor is a unusual at best. These are the people I work with everyday. Yeah, I know.

With epoxy all over our hands, we didn't get pictures of every stage of the glassing, but we snapped a few every hour or so. First, the chines, keel, and edges of the transom are laid up with biaxial tape. There are 3 layers on the keel, 1 on the chine and, two on the transom.

Where the tape is layered, the edges are offset to make fairing easier later. (Note: I have differed from the designer's recommended lamination schedule, with what should be a minor decrease in strength. I do not recommend doing this and if you choose to, do so at your own risk.)

With some discussion on the best techniques, we settled on:

• Frank mixed in a cup and poured into a disposable tupperware container that Cole was using.
• Cole slopped the epoxy onto the tape with a chip brush.
• After waiting to let the epoxy soak in I used a flexible spreader to move the epoxy around, force it into the glass, and make sure the fibers were oriented properly.

Here's the completely taped hull and Frank sampling the epoxy for some reason. It does smell kind of sweet I guess. Tragically, he died later that day. He always was a dumbass.


Gaining some confidence with the tape, we moved on to the sheet of bottom glass. This is the same material as the tape (12 oz. biax), but in a 50" wide section. We made something of a mess getting it straight on the sticky hull, but once on it laid out nice. We abandoned the brush with such a large area, and simply poured straight from the cup and used the spreaders to move the epoxy around. This glass soaks up a lot, so having a dedicated mix man is a huge time saver.

The roller in the foreground here was fantastic for getting air out of multiple layers of glass.


The area by the transom has a lot of overlapping layers of glass which makes it something of a bastard........

.......requiring the triple team.

Since Frank's mixing duties weren't full time, he was able to jump in and touch up areas that needed attention.

Before long we were finishing up at the bow. Once we finished every 6 feet or so, we would stop and put on a layer of 60" peel ply. I broke down and ordered some real peel ply and the stuff is awesome. It a polyester fabric. When pushed into the glass, excess epoxy bleeds through to its surface. It should eliminate most of the weave pattern in the final laminate, and help to keep the glass to epoxy ratio equal, making it stronger. What you're looking at in these pictures is the peel ply not the glass. When I pull the peel ply off tomorrow, the actual glass and epoxy should be pretty smooth with a matte finish ready to accept fairing compound. Let's just hope it comes off.


The actual glassing, from tape to peel ply, only took us five hours. That's killer. If I'd done it alone I could expect closer to 15. This would mean I would have to do tape and fabric separately. What we did today is termed working "wet on wet". This means that each layer, the precoat, each layer of tape, and the fabric, was wet when the next was applied. What this gives you is a chemical bond between each layer, essentially making the wood and up to 5 or 6 layers of glass in places one cohesive whole. Nice. It also makes fairing easier later. The alternative is sanding between each layer, basically making a mechanical bond between each layer. This brings the weak. The Flatsstalker Army made my boat stronger than I ever could have done on my own. This is why they rock the house and will always have a spot up on the bow whenever they want to catch some reds.

This is the first time in the build that I've been really pumped about how one of the building steps turned out, the first time I thought, "Man, we really kicked that one in the face." I couldn't be happier with the glasswork. I hope I still feel the same way when the peel ply comes off tomorrow. I'm tired. I'm going to bed... just as soon as I see if the epoxyis green enough to scrape out the runs.

Sanding

Holy balls, am I tired of sanding?!!!!! I should know. I do it everyday now. Come home from work. Slap on some 60 grit. And go to town for an hour or two.

Sand. Fill. Sand. Fill. Sand. Fill. But I feel like I'm getting somewhere. The boat is close to being ready for glass. It better be because come hell or high water, I'm glassing the outside of the hull this weekend. To prove to everyone that I really have been working on the boat, here are some pics.




The bow still needs a little work, as does the keel line where the bow starts to turn up. Overall it's shaping up OK. It doesn't really show up well in the pictures because of the patchiness of the filler, but the chines are smooth. The quest for perfection eventually turns into the hope that "the best I can do" doesn't look like "a big piece of crap". I mean how good is good enough? I don't freaking know. I've never done this before. But however good it looks tomorrow night, that's about as good as it's going to get. Cole and Frank will be around this weekend, this cold front is going to screw up the fishing, and I'm tired of smelling like epoxy dust all the time, soooo.......bring on the glass! Updates as soon as something cool happens.

Welcome to my weekend.

For those of you building the round chine, if you don't stitch it up fair enough, this could be your weekend too. I've been trying to hit them up every couple days for an hour or so, but Stef is out of town this weekend. That means some serious sanding. Since the garage attaches to the living area in my house, I usually feel bad making that much noise for too long. The timing is good though. I need to have everything ready for next weekend, because Cole and Frank will both be in town and willing to help me tackle the bottom glassing. Sweet.

I've found that hearing protection and an Ipod (read sick jams) are critical to this phase in the build. While you can find a groove and become one with the sander, music helps immensely in attaining this groove. The sixer of Full Sail Amber Lager just adds fuel to the rock. I in no way condone operating power tools while drinking. Unless you're sanding for extended amounts of time. Then it's almost a necessity. Don't think for one second I won't sand like a madman while listening to CoC's "Heaven's Not Overflowing" or "Albatross". Don't you ever think that.

Round Chine Stitching

This part is tough. For the most part, the rest of the boat has gone together pretty well. There is very little stress on any of the other stitches except where the bow comes together. I've spent about 10 hours stitching up the round chine and I've reached my "Rage Threshold". This is the point where putting more time into the project would not significantly improve it, but would begin to make me super pissed. I've created this graph to illustrate the concept.

The chine begins to form pretty easily towards the middle of the boat. The closer you get to the bow, the more strips come into play and the more outrageous the amount of twist they are expected to take. Here's one side stitched up and the other loose.

A view from a different angle shows the biggest problem with the chine. For the most part, the strips aren't expected to do anything unreasonable. The exception is where the strips cut from the bottom panels meet at the bow. By this point they have almost a 90 degree twist in them and they aren't very happy about it. This is how they want to sit.

The majority of the time put into the stitching deals with fighting their stubborn desire to NOT twist. The side panel strips don't really make too much trouble. After LOTS of tweaking I reached the point where I didn't think that I could get it any better, and slapped a sealer coat of laminating resin on the places I planned to "tack weld" with epoxy putty.

Once it started to set up a little, I mixed up the first of three batches of EZ Fillet. This stuff is a loose putty that is best measured out by weight. I bought a digital kitchen scale at Bed, Bath & Beyond to do this and the accusing look that the cashier gave me made it pretty obvious that she thought I was dealing weed. Ahhh, the joys of living in a college town. Once I had the stuff mixed I dumped it into a ziploc bag, sealed it, and cut the corner off. This is used like a piping bag to run a bead of fillet material on the exposed joints between the zipties that hold the boat together.

I came back with an auto body scraper and smoothed the beads and runs out when I was done. Once it sets, the zipties are removed and with any luck the bow doesn't explode apart in a shower of splinters and shattered dreams. Any remaining exposed seams are filled and then in the case of my monster of a chine/bow, I will fair and fair and fair and fair. Ad naeseum. To the uninitiated, fairing means that I will sand and fill the bejesus out of this:

......until all those little strips and runs and holes look like one smooth, pretty surface. It's gonna be rad. Once it's done, I can glass the outside of the boat and then fair the entire hull. For those of you who are thinking of doing this, here are a couple tips:

• A small section of PVC pipe behind the stitch can help keep things aligned. I found it useful to have 1/2" and 3/4" pieces as the different radii are useful in different situations.
• When cutting said pieces of PVC on a miter saw, use a blade with lots of teeth and wear eye protection. Or do like me: use the blade that came with the saw, close your eyes on each cut, and try not to let the shards of plastic death that fly out every 3rd or 4th cut bother you.
  
• When stitching, start at the point furthest from the bow. You only have to deal with a couple strips instead of 6.
• If things go out of whack, cut out the stitch and do it again. It's not going to get better.
  
• I put about 150 stitches in to the round chine and bow. I climbed under the boat for every one. Crawling in and out from under the boat over and over again will significantly lower your Rage Threshold. Walk away if necessary.
• Music is a necessity at this point. The stitching is tedium. I recommend punishing metal to match the mood of the endeavor.
• If you are going to do the round chine you absolutely cannot build on the decks like is recommended in the building notes.
  

It's A Boat!!!!

After this weekend, this thing is finally starting to shape up. Let's get started. There are two temporary frames that define the shape of the boat where the cockpit will eventually be. These are cut from cheap materials.

Supports were attached to each frame in order to attach them to the strongback. First they were clamped on.

Then Frank's drill press contraption was used to drill pilot holes for the screws.

Each frame was attached to the strongback using the supports. Each frame has to be adjusted for height level and square. It's kind of a pain in the ass, as each adjustment in one dimension throws the others out of whack.

The stringers were fit in the notches, but the notches weren't deep enough. A few passes with the jigsaw fixed the problem. Here the nearest stringer has been fixed.

Once everything was lined up, it gave a pretty good indication of the shape of the boat.

Next the bottom panels were lined up and the holes for the stitches were drilled the edges.

The panels were then opened up like a book and placed on top of the jig. The side panel were then stitched onto to each side.


I forgot to seal the edges of the transom, so I have to wait for the epoxy to set before I can screw the panels down. Everything lines up pretty well. The bow takes a good bit of force to cinch up and pulls the panels away from frames A, B and C. It will take a little tweaking. The round chine will take a lot of tweaking, however.

Even though this looks like the monster from Tremors, it will eventually be a the front of the boat. It's going to be awesome. I promise.

Strongback Part Deux

Well, after a week of inactivity, Cole and I figured it was about time to get back to work. I've had some other things stealing my boat time. But the Cap was starting to sulk,


“Arrrgh. It be cold and dark in here, and all me mates be long dead and gone.”

So back in the garage it was …….... right after we went fishing. I’ve been so consumed with the boat, that I had forgotten that it had been a couple months since I had last gone. So we took out my current boat, the “Hell Yes”, looking for anything that would bite. We had to run around to find the fish since it had been so long, but we caught a few. We each ended up with about 10 upper/over slot trout and one red. Half on fly, half of Exude jerkbaits. Cole’s red was a very pretty multi-spot about 24”. Mine was a rat that brought what we refer to as “the weak sauce.” The Hell Yes has been the perfect boat to learn the ropes where we fish in the Big Bend of Florida, but can’t quite do the kind of fishing we want to become good at. Hence the FS18. Since we’ve gotten into flyfishing, we need a boat that can creep up on reds in 4”-10” of water, where they tend to be pretty spooky. Since the HY is aluminum with a flat bow, it beats like a kettle drum when being pushed and it’s tough to get closer than 100’ to anything before it flees in terror. I can’t cast a flyline that far, definitely not with any accuracy. Some items will be transferred from the Hell Yes to the new boat, mainly the motor. The totally sweet bow mount for the trolling motor will not. Yeah, it’s pressure treated. Yeah, those are sheetrock screws. Feel the fury. Feel it.



Watching red after red rocket off in fear as we got close to them was good motivation for the next days build. I needed dimensional lumber for the new strongback, but I don’t have a truck. This is when the Hell Yes forms like Voltron and goes into cargo mode. Its functions are many.



So began the somewhat arduous process of building a new strongback, one that is better suited to this build and more stable than the last version. Bayport Bob brought up a good point on his website that in order to construct the rounded chine, one needs access from inside the boat. This means that you can’t build on the decks like is suggested in the building notes. I basically am building a frame on top of the strongback, like Bob did, but am anchoring it down differently. First vertical supports were put on.



Then the first and last horizontal frame members were set up using a water level.



A line was pulled between the ends of these and all the middle framing was set up based on these lines.



Lastly, the perimeter frame members were attached to the horizontal framing.



Everything was checked with a level at each stage. It sounds reasonable, but took 2 days to complete, and Cole’s help made things much faster. I had to redo the whole process once when I realized that without the top, the strongback lacked the rigidity necessary to hold a boat. When I screwed supports to the underside, it knocked the thing out of wack and everything had to be realigned. I’m sure there is a more straightforward way to do this, but this is where my inexperience comes into play. It takes a lot of time to set it up this way, but I don’t really know any other way to make sure the base to build the boat on is a flat plane. I’m absolutely terrified that I’ll glass the thing together and then realize that one or more stations are wonky and my boat will look crazy. It would be best to avoid this. When I pull up to the ramp with this boat, I want people to say, “Hey, that’s a cool boat. Where’d you buy it?” Not, “Whoa man, what’s that? Did you BUILD that thing?” This setup will make double checking with a level possible when setting up the stations, which just makes me more confident. There’s a good chance some of the supports will have to be moved to attach the frames, but it is difficult to know exactly where the frames will go before you have the transom on. Actual boatbuilding this weekend. Rock.

Strongback

Well, it's been a couple days and I'm still not sure what to do about the strongback. I'll probably just end up ripping 6" wide strips off of a 3/4" sheet of ply and glueing them together with woodglue, making stable, straight 2x6's. I'd use these to make a framework that would just lay on top of the old strongback. The hull frames would be attached to this framework with sections of 2x4, so that each frame could be independently adjusted for square and level. This scraps the recommended method of building the boat on it's own decks, but means you don't have to have an absolutely perfect strongback to build off of. If this sounds familiar, it's because I blatantly stole it from Bayport Bob's website:

www.wetconcepts.com/FS18.htm

In fact, just use his website as a reference on how to build the boat and use mine for the witty comments from the Captain. Or to see the potential pitfalls of building the FS18.

Elie (trying to figure out how to get a sheet of ply to my house)

Please Step Away from the Boat, Sir

So we didn’t get as far as I had hoped this weekend, but we are making progress. First off the stringers turned out pretty well. There was a lot of glue squeeze out which makes me confident in a good layup. Some work with the Surform and the block plane, and they cleaned up pretty well.


I figured since I evened up the stringers to one another, I might as well go ahead and do the same with the hull panels. They were nailed to each other and a combination of block plane, Surform and sander was used to cleanup all the edges. I was worried about how everything would line up, but it’s actually not bad. At one point I leaned down to really put some force behind the plane and planted my elbow squarely on one of the nails. Looking at it, I thought, “Man, I’m pretty sure that touched the bone.” As I cursed the weird, nervy pangs shooting up my arm, Captain Gnarly chuckled from above,

“Arrrgh, 'tis a wee scratch if ever I did see one. Do yur womanly places pain ye as well, me boy?”

Needless to say, I got back to the task at hand. Sometimes Cap’n G is a dick. The round chine option involves a few modifications to the bottom and side panels. The tip of each must be trimmed. Also the slits must be cut in the edges that will make the rounded chine possible. They consist of three cuts spaced an inch apart that follow the chine. This basically converts the chine area from standard stitch and glue to sheeted strip construction without having to deal with separate strips. I made a tool to draw the slits out with some scrap, duct tape, and a pencil.

As you can see, it's pretty advanced. Just set it at the depth you want and run it along the chine and you have a nice line to cut. The lines have a pretty serious curve to them and they must be cut perfect because they can’t be trimmed down later since they are internal to the panel. I was worried my full-size circular saw wouldn’t be able to handle the radius and was just all around too much saw, so I decided to cut them with my jigsaw.


This proved to be the biggest mistake I’ve made so far on the build. It’s tough for me to get an 8’ fair curve with the thing, and somehow I didn’t magically get better at using it just because the cut was more important. The cuts are embarrassing enough that I’m not even going to show a picture of them. They’ll show up in later pictures. Please don’t mock me. They look like they were cut by a drunken snake and then given a once over by a rabid beaver. I can’t wait until the outside is glassed if for no other reason than they won’t be seen anymore.

Having gone through all this, I figured I would cut out the temporary frames that fit where the cockpit will be. Easy right? Just lay them out, and cut them. Going over and over the dimensions for the middle frame, something wasn’t adding up. It kept coming up 1/8” off. Actually, throughout the build, I’ve had things come up 1/8” off in spots. While infuriating, I just chalked it up to my incompetence. Well, it turns out my big Swanson square is 1/8” off at the end. Awesome. Who knows how many spots are off in the boat?

I cut the notches in each frame to accept the stringer, but on dry assembly I realized that they are too shallow as depicted on the plans. I’ll need to measure to see by how much and then deepen the notches accordingly.


Deciding to wrap it up for the night, we figured we’d double check the strongback for level and square so we could be ready for framing Sunday morning. Somehow during the course of the build so far, it’s developed a 1/4” bow in the middle and about an equal amount of twist on the bow end. This would make for a nontriumphant boat that would probably porpoise like mad.

Having worked all day on a few hours sleep, I decided to do the rational thing and call it a night instead of cutting the strongback into many small pieces and setting them on fire in the front yard. This was my first and strongest inclination, and one that the Captain advocated fanatically.

Stringers

With a little help from Cole, I got the stringers laid up tonight in preparation for the weekend building. The stringers are the longitudinal portion of the "skeleton" that holds the boat together. They are made of a sandwich of two layers of ply glued together. They need to be straight and true.

This was Cole's first time working with the epoxy, so I let him do the work while I mixed. First we precoated the parts.......

...... and then went to Whataburger to allow the epoxy at least a little time to set. We then mixed up a couple batches of Gel Magic. I got a kitchen scale to measure out the glue by weight and it was much easier than trying to get the stuff to level in a cup. We applied with a notched spreader, sandwiched the two layers of ply together, and applied weight in the form of what you see here.

Again, this is probably more weight than is recommended, but a few of the pieces were warped and this method worked in correcting the warpage of the transom pieces. This shouldn't be anywhere near enough weight to squeeze all the glue out, so it should be OK. More to come.

Revelations

So I think I’ve figured out the best way for me to get a high strength laminate with my materials. I’ve always found it a little counterintuitive, but the strongest fiberglass/wood bond is one that uses the least amount of epoxy to wet out the glass. Basically, you want the epoxy to glue the glass to the substrate, not have the glass suspended in an epoxy matrix that is on top of the substrate. Maintaining the proper orientation of the glass fibers in the cloth is also important, but if you can achieve a laminate that is 50% glass and 50% epoxy, you go a long way towards increasing the strength of your boat. This is something that is routinely done by professionals, but can be tough for a newbie like myself. There are different methods to get there. A lot of people will wet out the glass away from the boat on a plastic table, squeegee out the excess epoxy, and then move everything to the boat. Unfortunately, I don’t have the room for this. Others will precoat the wood with a thin coat of epoxy to stop it from absorbing the epoxy from the laminate and starving the glass. I tried this but the glass was still getting dry in spots and pulling away from the wood. The pros can throw a piece of glass on dry wood, correct for the amount of epoxy that will absorb into the wood, and get a badass laminate. Not a chance for me.

It’s a good thing the panel splices are first because they aren’t particularly structural and they give you chance play around with the materials. I found out on the Bateau site that when I precoat the pieces, I should let them set up partially before I add the glass. I did this last night, layed up the glass, squeegeed out the excess epoxy, and it worked great. Great success!!

In addition to the glassing, I've learned a few other things so far.

I found out that a grinder is a perfectly reasonable tool when the sanding disc is coupled with the proper rubber backing plate. It goes from a wildly dangerous wood knife with high potential to eviscerate the user to an aggressive, but controllable way to remove material quickly. WHO KNEW?!!

I learned that if there is enough sanding dust in the air that you can smell it burning on the halogen lights, the dustbag on your sander is probably clogged.

I learned that even though it's just wood, Meranti dust HURTS when there is enough of it in your lungs. The oils in the stuff are mean. Respirators are your friend. The Captain refers to this condition as "that ol' Red Lung", something that he informed me should only be a concern for women and children, not real men.

That's it for now. I tried for a while to get a picture showing the differences in laminate quality, but it was an exercise in futility. It’s tough enough to see it with your eye, much less with a camera. All the panels are finished now. I’ll glue up the stringers tonight. I know none of this is very exciting without pictures, but I don’t have anything new to show yet. It’ll get more interesting soon. I promise.

Hull Panels

Took a break last night to watch the movie "Half Nelson" (avoid it unless you have a soft spot for crackhead middle school teachers), but I got a little more done today. Started on the second half of the hull: a little more grinder-based wood mangling, cleanup with the random ordit, and I was able to place the splices on one face of the panels. Tomorrow I'll flip them and do the other face. That should give me a couple days to glue up the stringers before the weekend. With the transom, stringers and hull panels all finished, I can start the process of building the boat. I'm going to have to order the adapter that allows my sander to attach to a shop-vac hose. The amount of dust the thing puts out is outrageous. The garage looks like it's had a liberal dusting of paprika right now.

Slow Progress

Well, when I woke up this morning, I went and checked on my splices again. I think that I got a little overzealous in smoothing out my peel ply last night and starved the glass in a few spots. Luckily the epoxy was still green and I was able to fill the few voids that there were without worrying about sanding. That meant that I had to wait all day for the patches to get green before I could flip the panels and do the other side. On a plus note, the splice sits lower than a straight edge when you set it across the joint. Should make for easy fairing. In the meantime, I glued up the transom. I precoated all three layers with resin (the West rollers worked great for this), and then mixed up a 6 oz. batch of the Gel Magic glue. This stuff is a biatch to measure. The resin portion must be squeezed out of the bottle in a big tube. It's like a huge bottle of that blue gel toothpaste. If you give it a minute in the mixing cup, it will settle down and you can see how much you have. Repeat this process ad nauseum until you have the appropriate amount. Why they don't give it to you in a tub, I don't know. The hardener reeks, but at least can be poured. Mixing the two portions together is tough at first but it seems to thin as you go. When the blue and orange components are mixed together, they go clear. The stuff just has some really unusual physical properties.

Once it was mixed, I used a notched spreader to cover the first layer of ply .......... about half way. Back to the blue toothepaste to make up a 12 oz. batch. Repeat process. When the three layers were laminated together, I put a piece of MDF with 3 trolling motor batteries on it on top. The idea is to try and eliminate some of the significant warping the plywood had when it arrived. I know the epoxy needs a gap to work and you shouldn't put too much weight on it, but it damn sure has a gap with the way my transom pieces are taco'ed up. I'm currently stressing out a little based on the fact that there wasn't much glue squeeze out from the edges of the piece. The Gel Magic is pretty thick, but the transom only holds the motor on the back of the boat. Just a minor piece. There's a transom under this mess somewhere.


By this point, I was able to flip the hull pieces and put another fiberglass splice on. I couldn't afford a belt sander, so I bought a cheap grinder with 36 grit discs to cut my trenches for the tape. Good lord, will a grinder kick a piece of plywood in the face! I'm far too unskilled to be using this tool for this application, but I am told it is useful for a lot of things later in the build. Once the trenches were cut, the application went smoothly now that I have a better idea of how much resin the tape needs.


Throughout the course of the day, any extra resin left in the pot was put on the hull panels. They'll all get coated eventually anyway.

So that's where it stands now. Half of the hull panels are assembled, and the transom is glued up. Two more hull panels and the stringers and I'll be ready to set up the frames on the strongback. Later on in the build, I'll have enough room, but I'm really wishing I had more right now. I would be further along on making these panels. Thus far, my saving grace has been how much working time these epoxies allow. I ordered slow hardener for the laminating resin, and I'm glad I did. It takes longer, but makes things less stressful. The Gel Magic definitely kicks off faster, but when it's spread out on a part it's not too bad.

Finally Some Epoxy

My build crew has abandoned me for the weekend, so no kickass action shots. Seems things like "working on their own boat" or "snook fishing" in "Tampa" are more exciting that watching me cut out hull panels. It boggles the mind. Anyway, I finally got everything cut out today. Most of the hull panels have to be cut in duplicate, so I stacked one panel on top of another to cut them. The cordless circular saw just couldn't hang, so I just went with a standard model that I own. Much easier. I should have just used that from the beginning. Unfortunately, in my excitement of cutting the very last panel, I forgot that it isn't doubled. I now have two extra tips for the front and tide panels and more stringer material than I need. I ordered one extra sheet in each size of ply to account for any screwups and man did I use the 1/4" one. Oh well. If this is the biggest screw up I make, I'll be pumped. I should be able to use a lot of the pieces as source for cleats and backing plates.

After getting everything cut out, it was time to start glassing. Because I don't have enough room, I have to use the strongback as a laminating table to glue up all my long hull panels before I can set up all the frames for stitching. First I put down plastic, so I don't glue everything to the table.

I aligned one side panel and one bottom panel on the strongback and then shot a few finish nails though them to keep them from moving. The build notes suggest that anywhere a fiberglass splice is made the ply be ground down to aid fairing later. A belt sander or even an angle grinder would be the best tool for this. I had an RO. It took a while, and I'm not sure I took enough off, but I got through one ply anyway.

Please disregard the uneven way the the panels meet. One is cut too fat and I figured it would be better to smooth then after they're joined. Two seems per panel.


Next I laid out everything that I would need to make each splice. A piece of 12 oz. biaxial tape cut to size and a sheet of plastic as poor man's peel ply.

The only experience I've had with glass is the 6 oz. woven cloth on Frank's canoe. This stuff is way burlier, basically two layers of glass at 45 degree angles held together with cotton or linen stitching. It's much more difficult to wet out.

Each joint was precoated with the Silvertip laminating resin. The glass tape was laid on and then resin forced into it with a paintbrush. Then the plastic sheeting was put on and smoothed as best as possible using both hands and a piece of PVC like a rolling pin. A curing splice looks like this.

The excess glass will be trimmed off when the epoxy is "green". This means its partially cured, with a consistency something like that of cheese.


This is where things stand after almost a full day of work. I would really like to reach a point where I can set up the frames and start stitching this week. A little more space would make this step much faster. Hopefully will have a new post tomorrow.

Quick Update

Haven't been posting much because I figured stories of me drawing line after line on sheets of ply would bore everyone. I've just been trying to get a little bit done every day after work. I've finally finished, and I'm hoping I'll have everything cut out tomorrow. Then the fun will really begin. One cool option on the FS18 is the ability to make the chine on the front 7 feet of the boat rounded. A hard chine above the waterline tends to trap all the little wavelets when your poling into the wind, creating hull slap. This usually isn't a big deal, but when you're in 6" of water the noise can spook fish before you get a shot at them. The only thing that will fully eliminate hull slap is a submerged chine, but a rounded one can help. This option requires the first couple frames to be rounded on the corners that define the chine, and that's what is shown below.

This is the foward-most frame in the boat after rounding the bottom corners. Aslo, I'm now a Bosch convert. I bought the RO sander before I started because I heard that if you could only buy one decent tool, make it the sander. When my mom heard I was building a boat, she was told that I needed a good jigsaw and bought it for me. The sander is great (I'm sure I will hate to even look at it by the end of the build), but the jigsaw is fantastic. It feels like a sewing machine. It makes the Skil jigsaw that I bought seem like a hunk of crap. I guess a more accurate assessment would be that using it makes me realize the Skil IS a hunk of crap. I'm sure some of the other high end stuff is just as good or better, but these are good enough to be wasted on me. I'll have to work up to them.

Expect more updates this weekend. Hope to make some progress.

Getting Busy

It was a long day today, but some significant progress was made.....on the actual boat this time!! The better part of the morning was spent laying out the patterns for the deck and frames on the 3/8" sheets of ply. With the Bateau.com plans there is no complicated lofting. All of the panels are cut from flat stock and all the measurements are contained in the plans. Simply draw them out on the ply.

Curves are drawn by bending a flexible batten around finish nails driven into measured points on the ply.

Since they'll be showing up in pictures, I figure it's probably about time that I introduce my build crew:

On the left is Frank of canoe strongback fame. His cedar strip canoe is coming along nicely, but he couldn't work on it today because he's waiting for the epoxy to fully cure. Building my boat would be the next logical place to be. On the right is Cole of redfish face-rocking fame. Frank is helping out due to his all around obsession with boats. Cole, my regular fishing partner, is helping out due to his obsession with more effeciently rocking redfish faces. Both motives I can understand and appreciate.

Anyway, back to the build. In order to have something to cut the panels on, we went ahead and enlarged the strongback to support the decks of the FS18. Basically, its shape now crudely follows that of the boat and is wide enough to keep everything from drooping.

It's now shaped like a coffin. This pleases Cap'n Gnarly. It also varies less 1/16" in height over it's 16 foot run, so we're in biz for the next step.

Once the patterns are laid out on the ply, we place them on top of a sheet of blue insulation foam and start cutting. We used a borrowed cordless circular saw for this. It's weak, runs out of batteries and the blade sucks, but its small diameter makes it well suited to cutting the sweeping curves in the panels. It gives a fairer curve that a jigsaw would.

Can you tell I was crawling around on the floor earlier? I won't show you a closeup of this cut because it looked like hell. Unfortunately, this saw's blade kicks sawdust to the front, obscuring the line right before you get to it. This makes cutting a little bit like randomly running a saw around on a real expensive sheet of plywood. We did come up with a very sophisticated solution, however.

Cole blew the dust out of the way with the shopvac, while I cut. While completely bootleg, it worked great. This whole cutting process went on for a great deal of time and we were able to get all the deck, frames and transom pieces cut out of the 3/8" ply. We laid out the deck pieces to make sure our strongback would work and you can now kind of get an idea of what the deck layout will be.
Just seeing the boat-like arrangement of the deck pieces it exciting. I can't wait to start wrapping hull panels. My shoddy cutting actually cleaned up pretty well in about 15 minutes with a new block plane that I bought. It's my new favorite tool. The next step will be to repeat the same process with all of the 1/4" panels. It takes longer than expected, but I hope to be slinging epoxy by next weekend. We'll see.

The Captain got a new place to rest his weary bones today too. A test piece from when I was playing around with my trial epoxy kit just happened to fit him perfectly, so we attached it to the wall.

He can now more easily survey our work and rain down insults regarding both our craftsmanship and manhood. I'm beginning to think that the Captain's ships were not very cool places to work. He was definitely not impressed with my cutting today.

Getting Ready (Part II)

Arriving faster than I expected, both my plywood and epoxy/glass supplies showed up midweek, so this weekend I have no more excuses. It's time to get down to business. This is what ~$1900 worth of plywood, epoxy, glass and various boatbuilding accoutrements looks like.


The plan is for that stack to one day be a boat. If you just felt something shake, it was probably all the redfish around Steinhatchee trembling. All of the epoxy products are SilverTip from System 3. Nice Stuff. The plywood is BS1088 Meranti marine ply. Looks like finish ply, but is suited to the marine environment. It's a little heavier than Okoume, but is also stronger and cheaper.


Today we spent the better part of the day getting rid of all the excess junk in the garage, cleaning up, laying down plastic on the floor, and gathering the supplies we'll need for tomorrow.


Not exactly exciting, but now we have a suitable build site and will start the real stuff tomorrow. The FS18 is typically built on a strongback consisting of two 16' 2x6's. The deck is placed upside down on these and then the frames are attached. The hull is bent around the frames. My build will differ slightly from this in that I will use an MDF strongback donated from my friend Frank's cedar strip canoe build. He's already done a lot of the hard work in getting a level, square work surface when he built this, so I'm going to take advantage of it. Here's the strongback from the canoe.

The top will be replaced with one more suited to the size of the FS18.

And lastly, it's about time that everyone was introduced to the mascot/director of the build. Scourge of legitimate maritime commerce, king of the high seas, authority on all things nautical.......it's Cap'n Gnarly.


His cruelty is legend. And as you can see, some dirty bastard broke all the fingers off his right hand. Thus far he is none too impressed with our handiwork. We're hoping that will change. When asked to comment at least on the merits of the design, he responded with, "Aye. A fine craft she is......... a fine craft, no doubt." That's high praise coming from one as grizzled as the Cap'n.

Getting Ready

Seeing as how my garage has been used mostly for storage up to this point, getting ready mainly involved throwing stuff away and making space. The second major hurdle was the fact that my garage is 18 feet long. The boat is also 18 feet long, so the back of the building space had to be extended. One side of the sliding glass door was coaxed forcibly from it's tracks and a four foot extension was built out onto the porch. It won't exactly be roomy in there, but at least it's possible now.


I may hit it with a quick coat of paint to stealth it from the neighbors.